2015 Volvo S60 / V60 Polestar

Volvos for drivers who care more about how they drive than how they crash.

It’s not meant to be a track car, but we did drive the Polestar on a track: the Ring Knutstorp, just over a mile and a quarter of evil, twisty pavement of the sort that makes racers call it “technical.” Knutstorp hosts a round of the Swedish Touring Car Series that Polestar competes in and slipped us onto the track during a preseason test day. The track’s rapid elevation changes and tight turns let us explore the car’s limits more than we could have done safely on the surrounding public roads.

Polestar didn’t touch the car’s electric-assist steering box or calibration but says the feel benefited from the front chassis stiffening and other suspension changes. Volvo offers three weight settings that appear four menus deep into the dashboard computer—they are discernibly but not dramatically different and can’t be changed on the fly, but the car remembers your previous setting on restart. The most obvious difference from a non-Polestar V60 R-Design is the turn-in response, which feels sharp but not artificially so; the steering feel overall is good, linear and predictable, but fingertips search in vain for feedback about road texture. The middle setting feels fine on the road. At Knutstorp, the heavier setting felt apt in the tight, slow downhill hairpin as well as over 100 mph on the straight.

At the track, we could confirm that the Haldex system does, indeed, favor a rear-drive bias, making it possible to rotate the car with power. If you get your line wrong and begin understeering, you can recover and lay power down earlier without inducing ugly, terminal plowing.

The upgraded brakes (a bigger master cylinder, bigger vented front discs with six-piston Brembo calipers wearing Polestar logos, and grippier pads all around) deliver great pedal feel and strong deceleration in concert with the sticky tires, but we could feel the pedal go soft after a few hot laps—a single slow cool-down lap, however, brought them back.

Track-day folks would probably favor more power in a car this heavy. Polestar replaced TWR and Prodrive as Volvo’s racing partner in 1996, largely on the strength of its superior engine tuning, and if you’ve seen its badge on other Volvos, it designates that they’ve been hot-rodded with the team’s software-based performance upgrades sold through dealerships. So it’s a little disappointing that the T6 here is in a relatively mild state of tune, making 20 more horses than an S60 or V60 R-Design. Blame that “stock mpg/emissions” mandate from Gothenburg, but it still takes a new twin-scroll turbocharger and heftier intercooler to do the job, in the process giving the Polestar 369 lb-ft of torque (up 15).

Similarly, Polestar drivers get the same Aisin-Warner six-speed automatic, but with new paddle shifters, a cute Polestar-branded lit shift knob, and, most important, recalibrated electronics. Leave the shifter in Drive and avoid the paddles to get the wagon’s 19 city and 28 highway mpg ratings. Slip the lever left to Sport, though, and you awaken the car’s inner Berserker. An exhaust valve opens, and even if you’re just cruising at in-town speeds, the trans is likely to downshift a gear or two. It sounds grand, and the shifts are notably crisper and smarter, whether you call for them with your fingertips or let the car choose for itself. It holds a gear through a corner (unless you demand otherwise), but downshifts aren’t as sharp as they’d be with a good dual-clutch unit, and there’s no throttle-blip rev match to entertain your ear.

There’s even a launch-control mode. Turn off the traction control, brake-torque while mashing the accelerator pedal past the kick-down detent, don’t wait more than five seconds (when overheat protection kicks in) to sidestep the brake pedal, and—whee!—you should hit 60 mph in 4.7 seconds in the sedan, 4.8 in the heavier wagon. The Haldex clutch that serves as a center differential to distribute torque is programmed to shift the force rearward more aggressively than in the R-Design models, and with no clutches to kill, the engineers say you could do that at every stoplight if you wanted. That’d be Polestar engineers; Volvo’s people tend not to encourage shenanigans.

Is Rarity Enough?

At the projected price of 15 to 20 percent atop that of a loaded R-Design, and equipped with all the gizmos that implies, there are sedan alternatives we’d examine closely before plunking down a deposit on the Volvo S60 Polestar. There’ll only be 40 of these, though, sure to be snapped up by the lingonberry, aquavit, and herring loyalists. But the wagon? Most Volvo wagons are driven by people who think “agility” is something for the dog to demonstrate in a trial, but the V60 Polestar accentuates the very attribute—nimble responsiveness—that crossovers lack. Besides, it’s rarer than a LaFerrari.

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